American unmanned aerial vehicle crashes into pacific

An American unmanned aerial vehicle that was patrolling the border between US and Mexico crashed into the waters of the Pacific Ocean near the California shore. The cause of the Tuesday accident was a technical malfunction that occurred when the UAV flew over the sea, 32 kilometers to the Southwest of San Diego, says Mike Friel, a border patrol agency representative, Voice of Russia reported. The border patrol agents who operated the machine decided to destroy it afterwards. The vehicle was one of ten UAVs used by the United States to patrol the country’s borders. The UAV had a special radio-location device that is used in coastal areas, including the areas above the Ocean’s surface. The UAV cost some 12 million dollars. The definite cause of the vehicle’s malfunction has not been defined yet, Friel says. The kind of the malfunction is also unknown. The border patrol agency has decided to stop using all UAVs till the end of their diagnostics. This is the second case of a UAV crash on the California shore in the last two months – In November 2013 another UAV crashed on board the USS Chancellorsville and hurt two seamen. American border agents use a UAV Predator B with a special radar to patrol the border between the US and Mexico along the California coastal region, the Associated Press says. Altogether, the frontier guard service had ten UAVs, RIA Novosti says.